Hearth
by vievere
Summary: They were both empty before each other, living lives that did not quite hold meaning. But they forged a family, piece by piece, and found they fit together rather well. [Howl/Sophie]
1. Chapter 1

_This series of stories will follow the evolution of Sophie and Howl as characters, both before and after the movie. This fan fiction takes place within the movieverse, though I will slip some details from the book. Thanks, as always, for reading._

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**Your Heart is an Empty Room**  
Part I: Him

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He had only gotten a small sliver of an image of her before she tumbled out of existence, the ground swallowing her from view. A warning from the future. And his heart beat in his hands, and he was surprised, and he didn't really feel anything at all.

Everything changed.

And so he forgot. And remembered. There was something he was looking for, someone he was looking for, but he was indifferent. His heart wasn't in it, his heart wasn't in anything he did anymore. Matters of the heart, it seemed, would not concern him again. Except when said heart, with its cunning and fiery tongue, annoyed and amused him endlessly.

He grew up. He left. He didn't look back on the life he had led. After all, he had done it for power. And he had it now, he could feel it rush beneath his skin like electricity. There was a spark of powerful magic within him and he no longer needed anything else to fill his chest. He was a powerful wizard and he did not need to be taught anymore by stuck up women and men with royal expectations.

Years passed as he traveled the world, a fire to warm him always at hand. The only real irksome thing about not having a heart is that it kept his skin feeling cold, but luckily he had an ironic solution for that. Then there was that feeling he got, which was rather unpleasant, and which made him feel like he should run and hide and look and seek all at the same time.

But he was mostly happy. The world was a big place and although he easily grew bored, he was good at amusing himself. There was always a new place to go, people to meet, things to see.

And yet.

The curse grew burdensome. He began to feel its effect on him. He grew lonely, and so he tried to find comfort in others. Just like he hid his heart away in a hearth, he hid himself. He played with disguises until he found one that seemed to suit him. Dyes, spells, potions that enhanced his already handsome looks. Expensive clothes, jewels. He took pride in his appearance. He was beautiful, everyone told him so, and the dyes and potions made him feel very good about himself. And then he was obsessed.

The fire called him vain, and he laughed.

He spent hours bent over a fire, hatching plans and pulsating magic that made him feel useful. They devised and built, jointly creating a place where they could be alone. A place they could settle. And so they made something like a home, or a fortress, and the new walls suited them well. It kept others out. It fit them, because their fortress didn't sit still on any sort of foundation. It had legs and doors that led to many different places.

But his contentment didn't last long. Because it was too big, too empty, and the walls echoed when he murmured words to the fire.

So he looked to objects. There were so many pretty things in the world, besides himself. And with a steady supply of work thanks to a handful of aliases and residences, he had enough money to have his fair share of objects. He filled up the emptiness in his new home, his castle, with pretty things. And as the place grew cluttered, he felt more at easy. The filled shelves, with musky books and shiny baubles made the castle less empty. Spiders found residence on his ceilings and dust collected on things he would never pick up after setting down.

When his castle, in all its wonderful disarray, was complete he was happy for a short while. He felt clever and his demon kept him company. He felt like the whole world was at his fingertips. He could do anything, go anywhere. He didn't need rules, he didn't need restrictions, he didn't need anyone telling him what to do. He was Howl Jenkins, or Howl Pendragon, or just Howl, or whoever he wanted to be whenever he wanted to be them.

A heart, it seemed, was a useless instrument. He certainly didn't need one.

So he forged a life. His ramshackle castle with its legs and temperamental fire was just right. It was filled with things, it could take him anywhere he wanted to be. There was always a hot bath, lined with many potions and bottles. And he was surely clever, because his door was perhaps his best magic of all.

There were opportunities. He learned new magic every once and awhile and got bored and found amusement. He talked to his demon, had girls ceaselessly at his disposal, and he felt the ever present buzz of magic fluttering within him.

And he would be happy. And sad. And angry. And childish. And very, very proud. And greedy. And vain. And beautiful. And, most of all, indifferent.

But he couldn't escape it, not within the walls that he encased himself in or with the purple, curved bottles which made his hair shine gold. Not with a particularly pleasant woman or with a particularly hard spell he mastered.

Every time he went out, he couldn't help that feeling from bubbling up again. He felt like he was being followed, like he was never safe, like he was missing some obvious fact. He was constantly unsettled and that annoyed him. He began to think it was the curse, following him around and leeching onto him.

He didn't like it. The feeling would distract him in the most unpleasant and unnecessary of times. His satisfaction with his new coat, with its emerald buttons and gold stitching, was suddenly lessened by its return. Or it would cluster in his lungs and choke him, even when he was walking on air. And it would sneak in, occasionally, when he felt almost-hot blood in his veins and a soft body under him and frantic lips working with his.

It nagged him, this feeling. This feeling he couldn't escape forever, which sometimes occupied his entire world and other times just passed, fleetingly, through his mind before being brushed away by something pleasant.

Empty, he felt empty.

And when it bothered him more than usual, he started looking for her. The girl who slipped away and carried promises he wasn't sure he really heard. He was always looking for her, this solution, sometimes more than others. He found her, hope, in many things. Every day, he would catch a glimpse of her. In the pretty girl with the blue dress walking by, who he would turn on his heels to pursue. In the brown eyes that fluttered closed as his hands wound into light hair. In the passion of a fiery redhead, who had hair like fire and danced so well and whose laugh was contagious and who didn't need him anymore than he needed her.

At first, they were to ease his loneliness and make him feel special. But she always snuck in there. In that nagging voice in his head that sounded too much like Calcipher.

_Is this her?_

_Her hair isn't right._

_Why are you wasting your time here._

_This isn't her._

_Where is she?_

And even the searching became irksome. Looking for her in others began to bore him. He lost patience with himself, ignored the thought of the woman who could help him, and started chasing after hearts for the pure satisfaction it brought him.

They loved him because he was beautiful and charming and clever and well-dressed and powerful. And that stroked his ego. Their bodies made him forget, their presence occupied his time, and they were lovely to look at.

If there was one thing he liked more than all else, it was lovely things.

But it was beginning to get a little old. A little too familiar. A little too easy to capture a heart. He knew all the right words to say now, it wasn't really a challenge to steal a heart or get into a girl's bed. It always got old, really. In the end they all bored him, or stopped making him feel good, or started hating him, or they let their true colors show. He always found that none of them were really special. And when he found that they weren't special, they stopped making him feel special.

He grew weary.

Then there was the boy. Dirty red hair on a child no older than five. He noticed him first because he was alone in a downpour in a town he soon had to flee – there were one too many angry women there and the rainy weather was horrendous for his hair. And then he noticed that spark, that aura of power that seemed to flicker off the skin of those that had magic. Barely noticeable, but he sensed it. Many people had magic clinging to them, he met a dozen a day who didn't even realize. It was no matter, really, most had no idea how to manipulate it for even the simplest of things.

And then he noticed that although the rain fell, the boy was not wet at all. His clothes were ragged but dry and when the boy looked at him through the window, he recognized the look. He had worn it too, back before he started watching shooting stars and when he had no gentle hands to tuck him in at night. The boy was an orphan. Even if he had no heart, he could sympathize. So with a sigh he left the shop with its blue velvet and scarlet satin for the ragged boy outside with eyes that made him remember.

Howl, in a surprising act of kindness, took the boy in. As his apprentice, he said, but Calcipher knew better. He held his beating heart and knew he was, occasionally, capable of kindness. An imprint of humanity and compassion was still locked in Howl's empty chest and when Howl felt, Calcipher felt.

Markl, he called him, because he heard his name wrong in the rain. The boy never corrected him and soon forgot it wasn't really his name at all.

Howl taught him magic with a new fervor and grew even more full of himself with a child's adoration thrust upon him. He was well suited to teaching, he thought. He was, after all, a very, very powerful wizard. The boy idolized him and did what he said and Howl soon noticed that he was beginning to rub off on the boy. Markl hated rules and scorned authority and didn't need anyone.

Howl was almost fond of him. He surely liked him more than the silly, beautiful girls he courted and the stuffy men who came for spells and potions. And he listened to him much better than Calcipher did.

Markl's childishness, which was both endearing and occasionally exhausting or rejuvenating, made him think about his own childhood. He was distanced from it. It was so long ago, everything was so long ago. A girl with starlight hair falling through the ground was ages ago. Perhaps it was just a dream. She occupied his dreams so often anyway, it was possible he had imagined it. But Calcipher remembered and Calcipher knew.

The years passed a bit slower with the redheaded boy following him around. He was fine with it. So he spent his days teaching Markl how to do spells and tend to customers and disguise himself. But the domestic routine was getting to be a bit constricting. He began to leave him alone more and more often. After all, he was a smart kid and Howl had better things to do than teach spells to a child.

He began whispering sweet words into giggling girls' ears again. It was very much the same thing, over and over, with very little variation. Some truly amused him, most just made him feel good about himself. So he continued until he broke their heart or they noticed his lack of one and broke things off. His ego would be hurt and he would throw a fit over his hurt pride and the loss he pretended to feel as he begged for sympathy from his demon heart and young apprentice.

He got into a little mess, eventually. A beautiful sorceress, perhaps one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, who actually made the chase fun again. He took great pleasure in her company, in her sly smiles and the graceful way her body moved and the soft purr of her voice. She drew him in, seduced him, made him think that maybe she was the solution to all his problems. The witch loved him, maybe he could love her too. Until then, he found contentment kissing trails of cold heat down her milky skin and delighting in her brilliant magic, witty mind, and clever hands. She was beautiful and enthralling and wonderful.

Then one day the enchantment broke. And although she was beautiful on the outside, he was aghast at her true character. Her heart was inky black, her magic cruel and unkind, and he was repulsed by the witch. She was a witch who cast curses on people, a witch who took joy in the suffering of others, who ruined lives of people who deserved better. He no longer found her beautiful, he shrunk away from her touch, and rejected all of her further advances.

She was furious she had not captured his heart, like he captured hers, and that he refused her. And her anger grew and could not be contained. Her anger manifested into magic and she swore she would get revenge. She went after him, her beauty falling away to reveal the hideousness of her corrupted temperament.

He realized he had made a mistake. Playing with hearts was a bit trickier than he thought. He was startled by the realization that his disgust with her cruelty was hypocritical. After all, did he not spread heartbreak and tears wherever he went because of his false proclamations of love? He realized he could be no better than her.

He had to do something about that.

That was when the rumors started. Rumors whose inception incurred upon his own lips. He had long been called a heart breaker, but when he set up shop in new towns and changed the colors on the dial on the door, he started letting whispers build about him being a heart stealer instead. He thought it was endlessly amusing and ironic and it was a fun game to play.

War came, out of nowhere.

Howl was annoyed that he got dragged into it.

His first time in a battle he saw things he had never imagined. Horror, blood, death. It left him gasping, shocked for the first time since he gave up his heart. And he saw great wizards fall prey to the darkness of war, saw men form into beasts.

Soon he saw himself turn into a beast too. He had always been able to fly, but now he took the shape of a bird. Dark, ink black feathers mimicked the clouds over head and the dark times that were sure to come. And when he returned back to his castle, he couldn't quite shake away his claws and feathers. He found himself truly affected, unable to abandon his problems as soon as he walked into his door. The feathers would fade eventually, falling back into his skin, but it began to go away slower than it had before.

He needed to get away from that. And he did so love a parade.

The girl in the hat and the ugly gown, he caught just a glimpse of her. Yet something intrigued him, and from the slight image he got of her she seemed to be one of those gentle beauties he so adored. She seemed to remind him of someone, but he couldn't figure out who. He would have to see her closer. He took a second to decide whether to follow her and, with a sigh, turned in the direction she had headed.

He caught another glimpse of her as she rounded a corner and it hit him.

He had been looking _everywhere_ for her.


	2. Chapter 2

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**Moth's Wings**  
Part I: Her

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Life was slow. And it felt like felt, paper flowers, soft feathers, and netting.

Sophie grew up quiet but willful. She liked to keep herself busy and be productive. Her hands were always occupied, and her favorite tasks were braiding her younger sister's golden hair and sewing little dresses for her dolls out of the leftover scraps of material from the hat shop.

She didn't really know what comfort was. Her mother's hugs were few and bony, her manner not quite motherly, and she didn't know that she was supposed to seek out her mother's attention when she had her feelings hurt or scraped a knee. She always was surrounded by soft, lace-trimmed fabrics and the same heavy, garden-scented perfume.

Sophie wasn't an unhappy child. She had her sister.

The taunts began when she was seven. While the boys would tug Lettie's braids and chase after her, they laughed at Sophie and stuck their tongue out at her. And the taunts that first reached only her ears, eventually reverberated into her heart.

_Ugly. Plain. Boring! Stupid. Ugly Sophie!_

Lettie tried to make them stop and for a long time would cry at their taunts towards her sister, while Sophie only frowned and looked down. But eventually Lettie forgot that there was ever a time where Sophie wasn't taunted, and stopped feeling upset.

Sophie loved her sister more than anyone else. Lettie was much like their mother. Pretty, cheerful, and with more materialistic tendencies than Sophie would ever be capable of. But she had a kinder heart then their mother, who was distant to both of them but even more so to the daughter that looked nothing like her.

_Sophie, my darling, why don't you wear the pink dress? You look so plain in yellow!_

Lettie, of course, received more attention and affection then her older sister. Sophie never really resented it, because she understood. Her sister was the child everyone loved. Who couldn't love her? Indeed, she understood fully why Lettie was the favorite. Her mother's preference was only natural. And, after all, Sophie liked Lettie more than she liked herself anyway.

Who wouldn't?

Her friends were a redheaded boy with big teeth and his mousy haired, quiet sister. Her name was Martha and she mostly hummed the same lullaby, over and over, to herself. His name was Jon and he dragged her on half-adventures and fueled her temper with his big mouth because, though he was kind to her, he didn't know how to be respectful or filter his words. This frustrated Sophie endlessly. She always knew when to be polite, she always would be respectful of her elders, and she never spoke words that she felt may injure others. She knew, of course, the effect words had on the heart.

Her two friends moved away when she was eleven.

Her tongue loosened when she started working in the shop. Her mother needed a new shopkeeper when the old one, a pretty girl with a dull mind that felt everything tenfold, showed up in frantic tears and claimed she couldn't work in this town anymore because of _him_. And so thirteen year old Sophie filled in, meekly hiding behind the counter and fiddling with the adornments on the hats on display.

But it didn't take long for her to find her place. The hat shop became a retreat from the company of other children, who she never felt comfortable around. And the customers never called her plain. They were too absorbed in the hats, and no one ever really notices the shopkeeper – especially when she was a plain girl with not much to say. But she learned to find her tongue. She had to, sometimes, when a customer decided they wanted to bargain rather than buy. She learned to be steadfast, and her underlying stubborn nature was revealed.

Her mother was pleased with how well she came to run the hat shop, and eventually turned more and more of the authority over to her.

On the off days, when ladies didn't come in for summer hats or festive bonnets, she began creating her own hats. She liked it. Just as she had liked stitching clothes for her dolls, she liked stitching designs and putting together arrangements on ribbon covered hats. She liked creating something beautiful, something that wasn't plain at all, something she could be proud of.

No one could call her hats plain.

That was something she could control.

Her talent for hat making was immediately apparent. Her hats were the first to sell, the ones that were most admired through the store window, and sales picked up considerably. She didn't make as many hats as were demanded, much to customer's disappointment.

Her mother was pleased with the boost in sales and her daughter's only profitable talent, and suggested gleefully that Sophie dear might dedicate more of her time to hat making than hat selling.

_You're better with hats than people anyway, Sophie dear. Look at this one! It's absolutely delightful. Don't you think it would look so lovely with Lettie's lilac gown?_

Passing her days in the hat shop, she didn't spend much time with people her own age. The interactions she did have usually consisted of awkward silences, snickers, and eventually them ignoring her presence completely. She didn't have anything interesting to say to them, and they had nothing they wanted to discuss with a girl who liked making fashionable things rather than wearing them.

And so at sixteen she resigned herself to her life at her hat shop, smiling politely at the ladies she worked with and mostly keeping to herself in the back room designing hats.

While she passed her teenage years as a hatter, Lettie giggled and flirted and laughed with friends. At night she would relate the tales from her day to her sister.

_You need to have fun sometimes, Sophie! You're wasting your youth, you know. Come with me to a dance sometime, please? We'll buy you a new dress and you can have fun for once!_

Her sister had the best intentions. Lettie truly wanted to help her sister. Make her more social, more alive; less morose, less quiet. And in her mind, she saw Sophie dancing and laughing and making friends.

That wasn't what happened, when she finally persuaded her.

Sophie wore a dress the color of a melting sunset, that wasn't new as much as it was hardly worn. It had been her mother's, but it was too big for her now. Sophie liked the way it hung heavily over her – it felt like armor. She wore a hat of her own design, with a simple ribbon and even a fake iris cluster attached to the pale silk of the ribbon.

Lettie introduced her to her friends. They smiled politely but did not attempt to talk to her. Boys came up, some chivalrous and some playful, and asked them to dance. Lettie tried to be at her side as often as possible, but she was not really one to turn down a dance.

Sophie stood at the side of the room, feeling painfully alone in a crowd of people. She had never felt more unattractive, more useless, or more boring in her entire life. No one asked her to dance, and no one talked to her but a plump woman who recognized her hat from the shop rather than her as the hatter. The short conversation exchanged between them made Sophie feel like her chest was tight.

Lettie pulled a boy over who wore a crinkled shirt, a besotted expression, and a pair of dirty boots. But he was handsome. Tall, agile, with sharp features and curling brown hair. Sophie blushed as he approached. But he had eyes only for Lettie as he mindlessly agreed to Lettie's suggestion that he dance with her sister. He didn't so much ask Sophie to dance as much as Lettie put Sophie's hand in his and pushed them towards the dance floor of the ballroom.

He asked her three questions about Lettie and then remained silent, more interested in the music and the marble tiles of the ballroom floor than his dance partner. Sophie tripped over her feet, unaccustomed to dancing, and he only winced. She felt incredibly ugly next to him, even if he did have a frowsy appearance. It made her realize just how little she was noticed, how invisible she was, and she didn't really like that. Not at all.

That night she cried into her pillow and wished desperately that she was different. More like Lettie, less like Sophie. She was going to end up alone, an old hatter, and would see everyone else's happiness while being helpless to find her own.

She clutched her sunset dress and forced herself to look in the mirror, choking back tears. She wanted boys to notice her. To be pretty. To be like the other teenage girls. To be interesting, and happy, and less plain.

She returned to her shop, more dejected than ever, with a slightly heavier heart.

And her life was filled with the sounds and vibrations from the daily train, the laughter of the women in the shop, and the occasional, accidental bite of a pinprick on her thumb.

It was peaceful, if nothing else. And she was good at it. It suited her, when nothing else did.

Stitch and sew wide ribbons onto straw hats, smile at Lettie, the mindless action of braiding her straight brown hair each morning. Counting the money. The walk to the market on Tuesdays. The smell of the silk flowers when they got a new box of materials. The mothballs they placed in the hatboxes with unfashionable hats, which they stored away in hopes of them returning to favor. Listening to Mrs. Peters read aloud the daily paper. Fresh flowers on the table in her mother's foyer. Lettie's laughter as she twirled around in a new dress.

The customers that remembered her name.

The old man at Lettie's favorite shop who called her "pretty thing" every once in awhile. Sweeping at sunrise, or sunset. Closing the shop on warm summer nights. The days where they could almost see the shape of the moving castle past the outskirts of their town. Tying new ribbons into bows at each end of her braid.

There were moments when her uninteresting life had glimmers of almost-happiness.

She refused to admit, most of the time, that she was terribly lonely. And that she always had been. She would grow old like this, this she was sure of. She didn't have much hope for change and her sense told her it was unlikely to occur.

_Leave him alone this instant, young man!_

Lettie was surprised when Sophie's brows drew together and her hands went to her hips, crossing the road towards a confrontation on the other side of the street. She approached a boy in a red cap, who had a smaller boy in headlock as he roughly rumbled up his hair. Sophie descended, index finger wagging and scolding the child until he ran off, then giving the sniffling, unkempt child her handkerchief and a friendly smile. When his tears stopped, he smiled gratefully at the woman kneeling in front of him, his defender, and tossed his arms around her in a fleeting hug before running off in the opposite direction of the other boy.

It was the most passionate Lettie had ever seen Sophie and the expression she wore on her face when comforting the boy made her desperately sad. She privately thought to herself, with sympathy, how much of a pity it was that Sophie would never get the opportunity to have children of her own.

She was so good at dealing with them. And she would make a wonderful, loving wife. But Lettie knew Sophie was not destined for such things, just as Sophie did. It was unspoken and obvious, there was no reason to bring up such a thing and hurt her sister's feelings.

Her passion could be visibly seen in other outlets. The way she attacked the cleaning in the mornings, rapidly sweeping back and forth with a determined look on her face. The satisfaction that a clean house and shop brought her was surpassed only by the pleasure she felt the few times when her mother absolutely raved about a hat she had spent an excessive amount of time on.

War came, and Sophie didn't like it. She didn't really know anyone personally involved, but the things she read in the paper were enough to make her flushed and angry and so very, very disappointed. And it was all over something silly, something trivial, and yet so many lives were being lost.

She sold more black hats, with beaded black veils, to weeping mothers, wives, and daughters.

But Lettie got a new job, and that was good. A good job, a bakery job, and it suited her perfectly. Whenever Sophie was swallowed by her hugs, she smelt of sugar and toffee. The sweetness suited her sister, and she could just imagine how well the bakery must be doing with her pretty sister tending to customers.

Sophie was right. Lettie would come to Sophie exhausted, huffing about the exuberant customers as she kicked off heels. The bakery was doing well. So well, in fact, that Lettie had little time for dances or tea with her sister. It was too crowded to leave, there were never any off hours like there were at Sophie's hat shop, and when she was done working she was simply too tired to do anything else.

So Sophie didn't visit at first. She didn't want to get in the way, didn't want to cause a problem, and she wasn't terribly fond of crowds. She made up her mind to visit sometime when she thought it would be the least crowded.

With everyone out in the square for the parade, surely there would be less in the bakery?

She took the trolley, then to the alleys. It was easier to find the bakery on the main roads, but it was too crowded to navigate the streets efficiently. She thought though, maybe, that she was perhaps slightly lost, and constantly turned her head back down to inspect the little sheet of paper she had written down the directions she had gotten from Lettie on. She couldn't follow them exactly, not with the crowds on the streets, and it was harder to figure out which way was the right way when she was taking a slightly-altered back route.

The alleys were quiet and she could hear the birds chirp, the roar of the crowds dying back and dimming. She looked around, contemplating her directions.

And almost ran into a soldier.

She sucked in air, not expecting it. Her mind went blank – she wasn't used to dealing with men. And were the complimenting her? What were they doing?

She just wanted to get away. She was uncomfortable in their presence, with their closeness, and their forceful, coaxing tones. She felt the urge to run, but she was too timid; a mouse indeed. Perhaps she should stay. They were probably just being helpful. She didn't really know how men behaved, after all, let alone soldiers.

But their possible kindness still made her nervous. She rejected their offers, stepped back, frowned solidly. These soldiers could not be kind, were just messing with her, and she didn't like it.

A voice.

The smell of hyacinths flooded her senses and a hand landed solidly on her shoulder.


End file.
